Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Or Else It Gets The Hose Again

"Look Daddy! I've hidden Owen's finger!!"

Why is it - after four years - that my daughter cannot follow the logic that if her stomach slightly aches in the morning, then she needs a poo? She tells me with genuine worry in her voice. "Daddy, my tummy hurts." It's almost a daily statement of purpose now. Then I tell her to go to the bathroom, she refuses and then I explain that it's probably a poo trying to come out the wrong way. You know - like John Hurt with that alien baby - except with a poo. But every day she'll look at me like that's crazy and then bounce around the room for five minutes. Only to come to a sudden stop when she realizes that she has to go to the toilet rather quickly.

My daughter has been doing her magic tricks again all morning too. Which, on the whole, has involved stuffing as many balloons into her pants as possible and then asking me to guess what she's got in there. Disturbingly she then removed most of her clothes, wrapped herself in a blanket so it looked like a cape and told me she was going to do a, "new cool trick." She then asked me to guess what she was hiding. While I was trying to figure out what she was going to do I suddenly noticed she was stood with her legs half-crossed like Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs. I then actually, for split-second, pledged that if she suddenly reveals at age four that she's a boy then I will just run until I cannot run anymore. She then giddily yelled, "Look what I ate for breakfast!!" and squatted on the ground. The stinging shock of the dichotomy that was presented to me was particularly strong. On the one hand I was hysterically pleased that the original appearing-wingwang trick was not going to come about. Yet on the other hand I did now have a new burning fear that she was literally going to show me what she'd eaten for breakfast. Devoid of any ability to stop what may happen I just tried to avert my eyes. Luckily she had just clamped a Little People Farmer between her legs and now dropped it to the ground. Sensing absolutely no discomfort on my part she then tried to show me another new trick where she puts her brother's finger in her mouth, thereby making it "disappear." It was then that I decided we needed to go for a drive. Not to go anywhere in particular, but just so I could completely change the situation. I think I even mentally yelled, "Safe Mode!! F8 F8!!" and then grabbed the car keys.

Driving around we then noticed that quite a lot of people in my neighborhood still have some Halloween stuff out. Not just Fall stuff - but the inflatable ghosts and witches. Each time we'd drive by a house still decorated for it my daughter would yell, "look Daddy that house is haunted!" The most astonishing was one that had a grave stone out front with a baby doll sticking up out of the dirt. Oddly there were no other discernible Halloween decorations save for the entire front porch had the biggest pirate skull and crossbones flag I've ever seen pinned to it too. So either it is a hold-over from Halloween or someone is just completely mental. My daughter also tells me that Scary, Spooky and Ted (the massive inflatable ghosts we drive by regularly) have changed into snowmen. And that in fact all snowmen are actually ghosts. Which is somewhat cool and cute. But she ruined all that by then pointing out that, "snow is also ghost blood from when they've cut their legs off." Might as well just go home then.

Anyhoo - I have to clean up for the delivery of a new dishwasher. My wife is super-jazzed about it. Me - I'm more meh. I quite like spending twenty minutes blasting some music and washing the dishes in the sink. A dishwasher has always just seemed like a cupboard to put dirty stuff in. Of course I say that as someone from a working class home. I don't think I even knew anyone with a dishwasher growing up. But that's probably because British kitchens are so tiny (generally) that trying ti stuff a dishwasher in there would be absurd.

So in lieu of anything wothwhile to say, have some pictures -:

Nb -: Years ago when I had not long started working for the evil that is insurance my line manager asked for one of the new hires to take over duties on report writing. It was to fill out actual paperwork each shift to send to a temp agency that had hired us to say who had shown up. I volunteered even though my handwriting is generally messy. Needing to ensure that the agency could read the reports my manager asked me to write a sentence on a piece of paper to see if I had what she called, "serial-killer handwriting." At which point I wrote the above, "It puts the lotion in the basket or else it gets the hose again." Yep - I got to write the reports.